With Valentine’s Day looming, it’s become an annual festival of flowers and fizz. And if you’ve ever said, 'in sickness and in health,' or a similar variation of your commitment to someone you love, understandably you probably don’t want to think about the 'in sickness' part until you have to. Yet the most loving thing you can do is protect the 'in health' part now.
Let’s have a heart to heart.
With Valentine’s Day looming, it’s become an annual festival of flowers and fizz. So what’s love got to do with it?
Love is a feeling… and it’s physiology.
And if you’ve ever said, 'in sickness and in health,' or a similar variation of your commitment to someone you love, understandably you probably don’t want to think about the 'in sickness' part until you have to. Yet the most loving thing you can do is protect the 'in health' part now.
Keep your hearts beating in time together.
Your cells run on clocks: circadian clocks (sleep timing), inflammatory clocks (stress load), metabolic clocks (glucose swings), and a very real ageing clock written into your immune and vascular system.
So this Valentine’s season, instead of chocolates that vanish by Monday, give something that lasts: more years together, with more energy, laughter, and love inside those years.
Let’s dive in...
Where insight becomes impact
What I’ve been looking at this week…
Many people miss this. They treat heart health like it’s just numbers on a printout, and love like it’s just a feeling in your chest.
Your biology does not run two separate systems.
Meaningful connection leaves its mark on survival. One major meta-analysis of 148 studies, covering over 300,000 people, found that stronger relationships were linked to around a 50% greater likelihood of survival. And loneliness is not just painful, it’s physical, with higher risk of coronary heart disease and stroke.
So yes, you can carry the biology of a broken heart.
Which brings me to the number to put on your radar this week. BioAge. This is your cellular level inner age. A lens that says Please Mind The Gap: are you ageing at the same pace as the one you love?
That gap is not good or bad. It’s information about your shared future capacity.
Every relationship has an invisible timeline.
How long travel feels easy together. How long hikes feel fun together. How long you can stay sharp together. How long your energy overlaps.
Your BioAge result tells you how fast you're moving through time based on your inner clock.
Couples who test together, move through time together.
Track it to hack it.
What I’ve been monitoring this week…
Here's a useful trio. One for vessel function, one for plaque build up, and one for connection cues.
1) Nitric Oxide test strips Nitric oxide is a key signal made by the lining of your blood vessels. It helps vessels relax and widen, improving blood flow. When nitric oxide biology is sluggish, vessels get stiffer, blood pressure rises and your heart is put under pressure. Test strips are put on your tongue and tell you immediately whether your nitric oxide levels are high or low. Couples move: test together for the next seven mornings.
2) Coronary Artery Calcium score (CAC) This is a CT scan that can reveal calcified plaque in your coronary arteries. I don't advocate this for everyone as it is a scan that involves a small amount of radiation, but it can be very clarifying if you have high lipid levels or a strong family history of heart disease. Couples move: if one of you has a family history of heart disease, CAC can turn fear into facts, and facts into a plan.
3) Bond Touch style bracelet This is a bracelet where a simple touch tells the one you love that you're thinking of them, wherever they are. These touch cues matter because your nervous system responds to safety signals. A brief “I’m thinking of you” ping can trigger a micro-shift in physiology: less threat, more calm, better regulation. Couples move: set a rule. Every time you get the tap, you take six slow breaths before you respond. A simple conditioning loop that trains calm.
From knowing to doing.
What this means for YOU…
Here’s the Love Language upgrade to use this week.
L is Lipids: do you know your ApoB and Lp(a), not just cholesterol. These are important markers.
O is Overlap: how much does your energy overlap with each other day to day? Action: The Walk and Talk Date: take a 10 minute walk together after dinner. It improves post-meal metabolism and sleep pressure and creates closeness.
V is Vessels: skip the chocolate dessert this Valentines. Instead, choose a nitric oxide friendly starter - a beetroot, pomegranate and rocket loaded salad.
E is Endorphins: Tiny doses of joy increase bonding chemistry. Action: create a daily micro- moment together that makes you laugh.
💼 Case in point: During a couples BioAge Results Reveal consultation with me recently, their numbers proved to be decades apart. One was ageing faster than expected, the other was notably younger. It created a wobble at first, then it did something better. It made things honest. They stopped running completely separate health projects and started understanding each other better and stacking shared rituals: the breathing check, the post-dinner walk, and the Nitric Oxide boost foods. They also protected Overlap, agreeing on two shared high-energy windows each week where work was not allowed to intrude. Three months later, both BioAge trends moved in the right direction, and the gap started closing.
Couples who test together, close the gap together.
If you’re curious about your BioAge test, click here If you’d like to test as a couple, reply with COUPLE and I’ll send you a personal discount link for two tests.
The first step to closing the gap is measuring it.
🎯 If you'd like any of the tests or interventions that I've mentioned today and want to make decisions with precision based on your personal data using devices that are specific for you, then book a private consultation and let's start to decode your health.
Where you’ll find me… Last week: So many wonderful conversations to catch up on after my trip to Chicago and Naples!
This week: Excited to be visiting clinics and labs to explore some interesting light based health tech, brain waves and scans - will share my evaluations.
Next week: Looking forward to speaking to CEO's in Lancashire. Will be my first time in Lancashire and it's where my parents first lived when they came to England in the 60's. There's something that feels very grounding about that.
A thought to pause on…
“Love is saying I choose you. Longevity is protecting the time you get to prove it." Are you able to commit to measuring the gap, and then closing it together?
Wishing you a wonderful week ahead (that's 168 hours of your Million Hour life!!) Dr Alka
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Take the free LQThis article is general education, not medical advice, and reading it does not create a doctor-patient relationship. If something has been going on for a while, please get it properly looked at by your own doctor.